The Landscape

Different societies see landscapes differently. You may look at

Elizabethan England and see a predominantly green land, characterised

by large open fields and woodlands, but an Elizabethan yeoman will

describe his homeland to you in terms of cities, towns, ports, great

houses, bridges and roads. In your eyes it may be a sparsely populated

land – the average density being less than sixty people per square mile

in (compared to well over a thousand today) – but a contemporary

description will mention overcrowding and the problems of popula-

tion expansion. Describing a landscape is thus a matter of perspective:

your priorities affect what you see. Asked to describe their county,

most Devonians will mention the great city of Exeter, the ports of

Dartmouth, Plymouth and Barnstaple and the dozens of market

towns. They will generally neglect to mention that the region is

dominated by a great moor, Dartmoor, , ft high in places and

more than square miles in expanse. There are no roads across this

wasteland, only trackways. Elizabethans see it as good for nothing but

pasture, tin mining and the steady water supply it provides by way of

the rivers that rise there. Many people are afraid of such moors and

forests. They are ‘the ruthless, vast and gloomy woods . . . by nature

made for murders and for rapes’, as Shakespeare writes in Titus

Andronicus. Certainly no one will think of Dartmoor as beautiful.

Sixteenth-century artists paint wealthy people, prosperous cities and

food, not landscapes.

The underlying reasons for such differences are not hard to find.

In a society in which people still starve to death, an orchard is not a

beautiful thing in itself: its beauty lies in the fact that it produces

apples and cider. A wide flat field is ‘finer’ than rugged terrain, for it

can be tilled easily to produce wheat and so represents good white

bread. A small thatched cottage, which a modern viewer might

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consider pretty, will be considered unattractive by an Elizabethan

traveller, for cottagers are generally poor and able to offer little in the

way of hospitality. Ranges of hills and mountains are obstacles to

Elizabethan travellers and very far from picturesque features that you

go out of your way to see. Hills might feature in an Elizabethan

writer’s description of a county because of their potential for sheep

grazing, but on the whole he will be more concerned with listing all

the houses of the gentry, their seats and parks.

It is worth being aware of these differences at the outset. It is

precisely those things that Elizabethans take for granted that you will

find most striking: the huge open fields, the muddy roads, and the

small size of so many labourers’ houses. Indeed, it is only at the very

end of the Elizabethan period, in the late s, that people start to

use the term ‘landscape’ to describe a view. Before this, they do not

need such a word, for they do not see a ‘landscape’ as such – only

the constituent elements that mean something to them: the woods,

fields, rivers, orchards, gardens, bridges, roads and, above all else, the

towns. Shakespeare does not use the word ‘landscape’ at all; he uses

the word ‘country’ – a concept in which people and physical things

are intimately bound together. Therefore, when you describe the

Elizabethan landscape as it appears to you, you are not necessarily

describing the ‘country’ as Elizabethan people see it. Every act of

seeing is unique – and that is as true for an Elizabethan farmer looking

at his growing corn as it is for you now, travelling back to the sixteenth

century.

Towns

Stratford-upon-Avon lies in the very heart of England, about ninety-

four miles north-west of London. The medieval parish church stands

at the southern end of the town, only a few yards from the River

Avon that flows lazily in a gradual curve along the east side. A squat

wooden spire stands on top of the church tower. If you look north,

you will see the handsome stone bridge of fourteen arches built by

Sir Hugh Clopton in the s. Cattle graze in the wide meadow on

the far bank; there is a small wooden bridge downstream where the

mill looks over the narrowing of the river.

Standing in this part of Stratford in November , at the very

start of Elizabeth’s reign, you may well think that the town has

barely changed since the Middle Ages. If you walk towards the

centre, most of the buildings you see are medieval. Directly opposite

as you leave the churchyard is the stone quadrangle of the college,

founded in the s by Stratford’s most notable son, John Stratford,

archbishop of Canterbury. Passing an orchard and a couple of low,

two-storey thatched cottages, you come to a muddy corner: turn

right into Church Street. Looking ahead, you will see the regular

divisions of the tenements. These are substantial timber-framed

houses, many of them the full width of sixty feet laid down when

the town was planned in the twelfth century. A hundred yards

further along on your right are the almshouses of the medieval Guild

of the Holy Cross. These make up a line of timber-framed, two-

storey buildings with unglazed windows, tiled roofs and jetties that

project out above the street at a height of six feet. Beyond is the

grammar school and hall of the Guild, a similar long, low building,

with whitewashed timbers and wooden struts across the windows.

Adjacent is the chapel of the Guild, with its handsome stone tower.

Its clock chimes on the hour as you step along the muddy street in

the damp autumn air.

Keep walking. On your right, directly across the lane from the

chapel, is the most prestigious house in the town: New Place, built

by Sir Hugh Clopton – the man who constructed the bridge. It is

three storeys high and timber-framed, with brick between the timbers,

not willow and plaster work. Five bays wide, it has one large window

on either side of the central porch, five windows on the floor above

and five on the floor above that. Each of the top-floor windows is set

in a gable looking out across the town. The whole proud edifice is a

fitting tribute to a successful businessman. In , Sir Hugh is the

second-most-famous man of Stratford (after the archbishop), and a

figure greatly admired by the townsfolk. The boys leaving the grammar

school and walking back into the centre of the town regard this

building as a statement of success. A future pupil, William Shakespeare,

will eventually follow in Sir Hugh’s footsteps, make his fortune in

London and return to live out his last days in this very house.

As you continue along the street, you come across a few narrower

buildings, where the old tenements have been divided to create widths

of thirty feet (half a plot), twenty (one-third) or just fifteen feet. The

narrower houses tend to be taller: three storeys, with timber jetties

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projecting out a foot or so further at each level. Unlike some towns,

however, the houses in Stratford do not shut out the light with their

overhanging upper storeys. Those market towns that were carefully

planned in the Middle Ages have such wide thoroughfares that plenty

of light enters the front parlours and workshops. Here in the High

Street you will find glovers, tailors and butchers as well as a couple

of wealthy mercers and a wool merchant. Six days a week they will

set up their shop boards in the street and place their wares on them

to show to passers-by. Most have wooden signs – depicting dragons,

lions, unicorns, cauldrons, barrels – hanging by metal hooks from

projecting wooden arms. Note that the symbols painted on the signs

are not necessarily related to the trade practised: a goldsmith’s shop

may well be called ‘The Green Dragon’ and a glover might work by

the sign of ‘The White Hart’. On your right, leading down to the

pasture on the riverbank, is Sheep Street, where more wool merchants

live and wool and animals are traded. On your left, in Ely Street, swine

change hands. Carry on along the High Street for another hundred

yards or so and you will come to the main market cross: a covered

area where needle-makers, hosiers and similar artificers sell their

goods. Beyond is the principal market place, Bridge Street. This is

more of a long rectangular open space than a street – or, at least, it

used to be: the centre is now filled with stalls and shops at street level

and domestic lodgings on the floors above.

At this point, if you turn right you will see Sir Hugh Clopton’s

magnificent bridge over a wide shallow stretch of the river. Turn left

and you will find two streets of timber-framed houses. One of these

is Wood Street, which leads to the cattle market. The other, leading

north-west, is Henley Street. Go along here, and on the right-hand

side you’ll find the house occupied by the glover, John Shakespeare,

his wife Mary and their firstborn daughter, Joan. Like almost all the

other houses in the borough, this has a wattle-and-plaster infill between

the beams, with a low roof covering its three bays. This is the house

in which their gifted son will be born in April .

At this end of Henley Street you are almost at the edge of town.

If you carry on for another hundred yards you will find yourself on

the road to Henley-in-Arden. As always on the outskirts of a town,

you will smell the noxious fumes of the laystall or midden that serves

the nearby residents. John Shakespeare has been known to use part of

his own tenement as a laystall, but he also maintains a tanyard at the

back of his house, where he prepares the leather for his gloves – and

nothing stinks quite as much as a tanyard. A walk around the back of

these houses in Henley Street reveals that Mr Shakespeare is not alone

in making practical use of his tenement for refuse disposal. Many of

his neighbours do likewise, disposing of fish and animal entrails, faeces,

vegetable matter and old rushes from floors in the dumps on the edge

of the great field at the back of their property. If you peer into the

messy back yards of those whitewashed timber-framed houses, you

can also see vegetable gardens, dunghills, orchards of apple, pear and

cherry trees, henhouses, cart houses and barns – places to dispose of

rotten food and places to grow new. You might say that Stratford

appears to be as much a town of farmers as craftsmen. Many of these

outhouses are thatched: a marked contrast to the smart tiles of the

houses facing the street. Note that some of the older houses have free-

standing kitchen buildings in their gardens; notice too how several

gardens have pigs, fed with detritus from the kitchens.

At this point you may wonder again at the medieval aspect of the

place. The middens of Stratford stink as much as they did two hundred

years ago, and its houses are still predominantly built with timber

frames. Many of them are well over a hundred years old. The bounda-

ries and layout of the borough have hardly altered since . The

market places have not been moved. What has changed?

The most significant changes are not physically apparent; they are

less tangible. For example, Stratford received a charter of incorpora-

tion from Edward VI in and now, five years later, is governed by

a bailiff, aldermen and the most important burgesses. Before the

town was administered by the Guild. Now that has been dissolved

and its property has passed to the new town corporation. Although

the town in looks much as it did in , it has altered radically

in its governance. Moreover, it is not so much a question of what has

changed as what is changing. Most of the medieval houses that still

stand in are hall-houses: one or two ground-floor rooms (a hall

and a chamber) with packed-earth floors, open to the roof, and a

hearth in the centre of the hall. They do not have chimneys. But just

consider what a difference a chimney makes: it allows one heated

room to be built on top of another. In this way, a large number of

rooms can be built on the same ground as one old hall. No doubt the

building that once stood on the patch of John Shakespeare’s house

was a hall-house; its replacement has back-to-back fireplaces and a

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stack rising through the whole house, giving heat to two downstairs

and two upstairs chambers. Another stack rises at the far end, heating

the workshop and the chamber above. Many of John’s neighbours are

still living in single-storey houses; but already in November ,

Stratford, like all the other small towns in England, has started to

grow – not outwards so much as upwards.

You will see exactly how fast Stratford is changing if you return

forty years later, in , towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign. The

church is still there, the roads have not changed, the Guild buildings

and school have not been substantially altered – but more than half

the town has been rebuilt. This is partly due to two catastrophic fires

in and , which destroy houses, making about a quarter of

the population homeless. There are now many more brick chimneys

and consequently many more tall houses. In fact, brick is one of the

keys to change. The affordable production of a durable and fireproof

chimney material means that two- and three-storey houses can be built

even in places where stone is scarce and masonry expensive. Walk back

down Henley Street, across the market place and back into the High

Street, and you’ll see that the whole skyline has changed. Almost all

the houses on your right are now three storeys high, displaying much

more elegance and symmetry in their timber construction, with more

carved woodwork on the beams facing the street. Some of these houses

have greased paper or cloth under a lattice in their windows to allow

in a little light while keeping out draughts, but others now have glass

in the street-facing chambers. Glass, which is very rare in town houses

in , becomes available to the reasonably well-off in the s. Not

all of the new buildings facing the street will have been constructed

with glass windows in mind, for it is still difficult to get hold of in

; but most people with disposable income will try to obtain it –

importing it in pre-constructed frames from Burgundy, Normandy or

Flanders, if they cannot get hold of English glass. Nor will a house-

holder necessarily equip his whole house with glass at once: he might

install it in his hall and parlour and leave the other, less-important

rooms unglazed. In a chimney is the prime status symbol to show

off to the neighbours. In it is glazing.

A less desirable aspect of the changes being wrought in Stratford

is the accommodation of the poor. You might think that barn conver-

sions are a feature of the modern world, but a glimpse at the back

yards of some properties will tell you otherwise. Quite a few old

barns are let out to paupers who have nowhere else to go. The popu-

lation of Stratford in is about ,; by it has swelled to

,. And that latter figure probably does not include all the poor

and vagrants in and around the town – one report in mentions

that the corporation is struggling to cope with paupers. Now

you can see why the well-off are living ostentatiously in handsome,

glazed houses: it separates them from the have-nots. You can see why

William Shakespeare, the son of the glover, is so proud of having

acquired New Place in , with its brick, glazed windows and chim-

neys – a far cry from the smelly house where he spent his boyhood

(and where his aged father still lives). And you can see why William’s

wife, Anne, is pleased to be living in New Place rather than the two-

room farmhouse in Shottery where she grew up. There the hall was

open to the rafters, with an earth floor, as was the chamber that she

shared with her seven siblings. True, at New Place she has to cope

with her husband being away in London for long periods of time,

but, in the sixteen years since her marriage in , she has seen her

living standards undergo an extraordinary transformation, partly due

to having more money and partly due to the changes in what that

money can buy.

What is true for Stratford and its inhabitants also applies to other

urban settlements. In there are twenty-five cathedral cities and

market towns in England and Wales. The rebuilding they are all

undergoing makes it impossible to compare them in size, for their

populations are changing rapidly. London, for example, has a popula-

tion of about , in and about , in ; it moves from

being the sixth-largest city in Europe (after Naples, Venice, Paris,

Antwerp and Lisbon) to being the third (after Naples, with ,

inhabitants, and Paris, with ,). Some other English towns are

growing in similarly dramatic fashion. Plymouth, for example, has a

population of ,–, at the start of the reign and , at the

end. Newcastle also doubles in size over the years –. On the

other hand, in some places the numbers are static: Exeter is home to

about , people throughout the sixteenth century. A few towns

are even shrinking in population, such as Salisbury and Colchester,

both of which have , fewer souls in than in the mid-s.

But the overall growth is noticeable from the fact that in the mid-s

only ten towns have a population of more than ,; by this

number has risen to twenty.

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The Most Populous Towns and Cities in England in 16009

No. Place Estimated population

capital letters denote a city

*denotes a port

1 LONDON* 200,000

2 NORWICH 15,000

3 YORK 12,000

4 BRISTOL* 12,000

5 Newcastle* 10,000

6 EXETER* 8,000

7 Plymouth* 8,000

8 Coventry 6,000

9 SALISBURY 6,000

10 Lynn* 6,000

11 GLOUCESTER* 6,000

12 CHESTER* 6,000

13 Kingston upon Hull* 6,000

14 Ipswich* 5,000

15 CANTERBURY 5,000

16 Colchester 5,000

17 WORCESTER 5,000

18 Great Yarmouth* 5,000

19 OXFORD 5,000

20 Cambridge 5,000

Several points emerge from the above table. First, although

Stratford-upon-Avon is not what you would call a large town, with

just , inhabitants in , only twenty towns in England are twice

as populous. Thus we might say that Stratford is truly representative

of the majority of towns in England and Wales. Second, only half of

the twenty-two English cathedral cities are in the above list. The other

eleven – Winchester, Carlisle, Durham, Ely, Lincoln, Hereford,

Lichfield, Rochester, Chichester, Peterborough and Wells – all have

fewer than , inhabitants, so you should not assume that a city is

a populous place. Third, eleven of the twenty most-populous towns

are ports (twelve if we include York, which has a modest quay). In

fact, the fastest-growing large towns – London, Newcastle and

Plymouth – are all sea ports, reminding us that a world of opportuni-

ties is opening up to Elizabethans through the island’s long coastline

and geographical position. Medieval people saw the sea as a barrier

or frontier. Under the Tudor monarchs it comes to be recognised as

one of the country’s greatest natural resources.

The most significant point implicit in the table of populous towns

is more subtle. If you compare it with a similar table for medieval

England you will see that it reveals a process of urbanisation. The

towns on the above list are home to , people; the twenty largest

towns in had fewer than half this number. In addition, more

people live in the many small market towns than they did in previous

centuries. Some of these have just inhabitants living in a hundred

houses clustered around one single main road or square. But dozens

more are like Stratford, housing ,–, people, with all the profes-

sional and administrative functions one associates with a proper town.

In approximately per cent of the population lives in a town,

compared to about per cent in . This is an important develop-

ment: if one in four people grows up in a town, then English culture

is becoming increasingly urban. Society as a whole is less closely tied

to the countryside. The self-reliant townsman, with a trade and the

ambition to advance his status and living standards, is fast becoming

the principal agent of social and cultural change. The system of

villeinage – the old tradition of peasants being bonded individually

and collectively to the lord of the manor, to be bought and sold along

with the land – is hardly to be found anywhere.

Like Stratford, many towns retain their medieval street layout. No

fewer than of them preserve their medieval walls. Almost all

have long lines of timber-framed houses with gables overlooking the

streets, interspersed among the medieval churches and old halls. Most

have areas where houses with large gardens have something of the

‘urban farm’ appearance: Norwich is said to have so many trees that

it may be described as either ‘a city in an orchard or an orchard in a

city’. But what will strike you is the number of buildings under

construction, their skeletal timber frames open to the elements or

their stone fronts surrounded by scaffolding. The old friaries and

monasteries are being turned into warehouses or demolished to make

way for new housing. In the summer months an English town

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resembles an enormous building site, as several dozen new houses

have their foundations dug and men stripped to the waist haul dirt

up in buckets on pulleys from cellars, or lift heavy oak timbers up to

form the joists of a house. Watch them passing up long elm boards

to their fellows on the upper floors, talking with the master carpenter,

measuring and cutting the frames of the windows and the shutters,

and filling the gaps between the timbers with wattle or brick. Everyone

is moving into a town, it seems.

Towns are not just for the benefit of the people who live in them.

They are also crossroads: places where country life and urban profes-

sions, services and administrations mix, and where agreements can

be given legal force. A town like Stratford might have upwards of one

hundred brewers, but that does not mean the whole town is full of

heavy drinkers; rather it indicates that all those who come into town

from the hinterland on market days don’t have to go thirsty. Similarly

a town’s surgeons and physicians do not simply administer to urban

needs, but travel out to the parishes in the surrounding countryside,

serving a population that might be several times larger than that of

the town itself. Look among the houses and shops of Stratford and

you will see the full range of occupations that make up such a settle-

ment: wheelwrights, carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, tinsmiths,

tailors, shoe-makers, glovers, victuallers, butchers, brewers, maltsters,

vintners, mercers, lawyers, scriveners, physicians, surgeons, apothe-

caries and drapers. Most towns like Stratford will have more than sixty

recognised occupations; a large city like Norwich or Bristol may have

considerably more than a hundred.

Before leaving Stratford, consider how the seasons affect the appear-

ance of an Elizabethan town. The streets are not paved – very few

towns are – so in April the showers create quagmires, especially at

the crossroads where carts turn, churning up the mud. However much

gravel is put down on the main approach roads, it is never enough to

be of lasting benefit. In summer the mud dries to cakes of earth and

then breaks up, so that the same carts and horses’ hooves now kick

up dust. The streets are more crowded too, for people mostly travel

in summer. The numbers of country dwellers coming to market are

supplemented by merchants arriving from the coastal towns with fresh

fish for sale. As the season dwindles to autumn, the roads become

less busy. On some days the streets will be almost empty as people in

the countryside head out into the fields to gather in the harvest, taking

baskets of food to sustain them on their long working days. Late

autumn sees more rain, and cattle, pigs and sheep herded into town

to be sold before the feast of Martinmas ( November) when many

will be slaughtered and salted for the oncoming season. Looking down

the same streets in winter, with the chill air and the smell of wood

smoke everywhere, you will see fewer people out and about. The

average temperature is about two degrees Celsius colder than what

you are used to, with especially cold snaps in the s and s.

When snow falls, you wake to see the white blanket across the street

– thinner on the edge, where less snow falls due to the overhanging

eaves. Houses are decorated with evergreens around the doors. Long

icicles hang down from their gutterless roofs, discouraging people

from walking too closely to the walls. Carts leave wheel tracks, pressing

the snow into slush and mud. Many people remain inside their houses,

not even opening their shuttered, unglazed windows. The appearance

of the whole town thus shifts with the seasons – to a much greater

degree than a paved and glazed modern town, where most activities

are conducted under cover.

The Countryside

Leaving Stratford-upon-Avon by the long stone bridge, you have a

choice of two routes to London. One takes you via Banbury, the

other via Oxford (turn right immediately on the far side of the bridge

if you prefer the latter). The country here is flat and sparsely popu-

lated: the figure of sixty people per square mile given at the start of

this chapter is hardly true of this corn-growing region. Parishes here

have about thirty people per square mile, on average; but some are

as sparse as seventeen. Rather than houses, it is the fields that will

catch your attention: massive areas of hundreds of acres, or even a

thousand, each one divided into smaller units called furlongs. A

furlong is divided in turn into between four and a dozen strips of

land, each strip being allotted to a tenant of the manor. Between

each furlong there is a narrow path of untilled soil, called a baulk,

by which tenants might access their strips with a cart. The contem-

porary word for this sort of farmland is ‘champaign country’ (from

the French champ, meaning field). The countryside is therefore a giant

patchwork of furlongs, each characterised by the direction of the

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strips and the type of crop that is growing. Some tenants plant wheat

on a few of their strips and hardier crops – such as rye, vetches or

barley – on the others. Some rotate the crops they plant: barley this

year, wheat the next. Often you will see fields left fallow, or areas left

to be grazed by pigs and cattle. Here and there, on the edges of the

great fields, you will see small enclosures for livestock (known as

‘closes’ rather than fields). This open-field agriculture dominates the

Midlands: Oxfordshire is almost entirely unenclosed in , and no

fewer than of the rural parishes in the adjacent county of

Berkshire have open fields.

England is not all tilled in this way. In fact, less than one-third is

tilled at all. About ,, acres of England and Wales are under

the plough ( per cent of the total area). Almost as much – about

ten million acres ( per cent) – comprises untilled heaths, moors,

mountains and marshland. You will be amazed at how much wasteland

and ‘wilderness’ there is. In places like Westmorland this is only to

be expected; being so rugged, and so near the lawless Scottish border;

it is not surprising that three-quarters of that county is wild. You can

say the same for the granite uplands of the south-west: Devon has at

least , acres of moor and heath. But even Hampshire has ,

acres of unfarmed land and Berkshire , acres of waste. On top

of this, there are the managed woodland and natural forests, which

account for a further per cent of the kingdom, and the pasture,

parks, downland and commons, which collectively occupy another

per cent. The remaining per cent is towns, houses, gardens,

churchyards, orchards, roads, rivers and lakes.

The reason why so much of England is used for grazing is the

value of sheep. They are not just a food source; an even more impor-

tant reason for farming them is the value of the wool. Many rural

communities depend heavily on the wool trade for their income. Huge

amounts of money are raised for the government through the imposi-

tion of customs duties on wool, woolfells and fleeces exported to

Europe. In –, cloth and woollens account for . per cent (by

value) of all the exports from England – amounting to some £,,

– and the largest proportion of the remaining . per cent is raw

wool, followed by woolfells. This is why you will see so many sheep

in England: more than eight million of them, twice as many as there

are people. Having said that, these are not quite the animals with

which you are familiar: they are very small. Average weights are

gradually rising (through improvements in husbandry), from about

lbs per sheep in to lbs in , with the largest weighing

lbs; but still these are tiny by comparison with modern ewes, which

weigh –lbs (a modern ram can weigh more than lbs). Much

the same can be said for the cattle (about lbs in Elizabethan times,

and ,–,lbs today).

The fields, commons and rivers are the most striking features

of the landscape as you travel towards the city of London. But

such a journey will also bring many other agricultural practices to

your attention. The area of woodland is now rapidly shrinking.

One man in Durham has already started his long career felling

trees – by he will have chopped down more than , oaks

single-handedly. As these take more than a century to grow to

maturity, this is clearly unsustainable; but many landlords do not

regret the permanent loss of their woods because the cleared land

can be used for other agricultural purposes. The widespread felling

is thus doubly drastic: being permanent, it leads to higher prices

of wood, encouraging landlords to fell yet more timber. Add the

increase in the population and the extra wood needed for all the

extra tools, cupboards, tables, beds and chests for all the extra

people, not to mention the materials needed for the building (and

rebuilding) of their houses, and you can see why there is not very

much wood left. On top of all this, the wars with France and Spain

have led to increased demand for timber – more than oak trees

are needed to build a warship – further adding to the demand for

wood. Firewood is thus expensive and in short supply, and many

people have started talking about a ‘fuel famine’. The government

tries to take action, passing Acts of Parliament in , and

to prevent wood being used for unnecessary purposes; but

demand still massively outstrips supply. The price of timber effec-

tively doubles over the course of the reign.

Timber felling is not the only substantial change being wrought on

the countryside. A second one is enclosure. Many landlords evict their

tenants and level their homes, replacing the good arable land with

fields for their sheep. Others create deer parks where there used to

be villages. Some landowners even deem it necessary to have two

parks adjacent to their country seat, one for red deer and one for

fallow. In some respects this is an attempt to hold back the pace of

change and to re-create a lost ‘natural world’, where men are free to

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hunt their food in a wooded Elysium. In other respects, it is just a

status symbol. But whether done for sheep farming or for hunting,

the destruction of arable fields and villages is a profound worry to

the families who are evicted. It is equally worrying to the authorities

in those towns where the homeless husbandmen go begging. The

gradual loss of land to the working man and his family may fairly be

described as the second-greatest single cause of unrest during the

reign, second only to religion. By , in some counties, one in six

villages that existed in has been destroyed by enclosure. As we

have seen, Oxfordshire and Berkshire are still almost entirely unen-

closed, but they are not the norm. Fifty-eight villages have disapperared

in Warwickshire, sixty in Leicestershire.

Not all of England’s landscape is the same. Large open fields domi-

nate the heart of the kingdom, from Yorkshire down to the south

coast, but they are not found along the Welsh border, nor in the

north-west, East Anglia or Kent, where enclosed field systems are the

norm. Similarly you are unlikely to come across any large open fields

anywhere further west than Braunton, in north Devon. The villages

in these regions are also different. Rather than being nucleated – gath-

ered closely around a church, as they are in open-field farming counties

– the houses are more spread out, often quite isolated from the centre

of the community.

Different types of corn are grown in the various regions. Oxfordshire

is mainly champaign country, growing high-quality wheat. Go to

Norfolk, however, and you will find more rye in the fields. In Wiltshire,

wheat and barley are equally popular. Further west, barley thrives

better in the wet conditions. In Lancashire and the north, oats are

the most common crop. In Yorkshire three times as much rye is

grown as wheat. In Kent – the garden of England – there are more

orchards than anywhere else, producing the finest apples and cherries.

Indeed, Kent is particularly well provisioned, for the Kentish inherit-

ance system of gavelkind means that yeomen’s estates are divided

equally between their sons. Thus extensive farms are often broken

up and turned into smaller units, and these are carefully tended by

the next generation of yeomen, who are owner-occupiers and more

efficient in their use of land.

Another rapidly changing area of the countryside is its perimeter

– the coast. Ports have existed since Roman times, of course, but

changing attitudes to the sea are observable in the way people are

now prepared to live on the coast in smaller communities. The

dangers of the early Middle Ages, when any coastal community was

prey to Norse and Danish marauders, or Irish and Scots pirates, are

long gone. People across England have started to build much closer

to the sea, and fishing villages have sprung up all round the coast.

Some of these are deliberately planted by the lord of the manor.

George Cary builds a stone pier at Clovelly in north Devon in this

reign, emulating earlier piers such as those at Port Isaac (early

sixteenth-century) and Lyme Regis (medieval). Sir Richard Grenville

likewise builds a harbour at Boscastle in . The opportunities

provided by the sea are particularly exploited by the Cornish: they

start exporting pilchards in huge quantities to Spain. They are closely

followed by the people of Sussex, where fishing transforms many

villages. Brighton has been home to a modest fishing community

since Domesday, but now it is fast becoming a prosperous town on

the strength of the industry. Despite the French burning it to the

ground in , it has been rebuilt and has eighty fishing vessels by

, catching plaice, mackerel, conger eel, cod and herring in local

waters, the Channel and the North Sea. Whereas in William

Horman could expect his pupils to recite ‘It is not good living on

the sea coasts’, by Elizabeth’s reign more and more families are

finding that quite the opposite is true.

Many labourers’ cottages in the countryside are still open halls, or

two-room structures of a single storey. Houses made of cob are

common in the rural parts of the West Country – in areas too far

from the moorland granite or the red sandstone of the Exe estuary.

Villages and farmsteads reflect the geological make-up of the country

far more than the towns: constructed by the local community and

designed with practicality in mind, they are made only of local

materials. Running across the country, from the East Riding of

Yorkshire down through Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire

to Wiltshire and east Somerset, is a wide belt of limestone; so naturally

the local farmhouses and cottages are built of that. Many houses in

Cheshire, the Welsh border and the Midlands are timber-framed, due

to the lack of stone. Houses in the north are predominantly built with

large blocks of limestone or sandstone. In the south-east, Kent can

boast more than a thousand timber-framed houses of two storeys,

these being part of a gradual rebuilding that started in the late fifteenth

century. Here chimneys have already become the norm, although glass

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windows are still scarce. But in every region there is a social distinc-

tion. The wealthier sort, the gentlemen and the richer yeomen, are

busy rebuilding their substantial houses in much the same ways as

the merchants in the towns. It is the rural workers who are still living

in the same conditions as their forefathers, in old single-storey,

draughty, dark, small cottages.

Any village is much more than just a series of houses. There are

the communal structures of the church and church house. All across

the surrounding parish there are barns, byres, corn lofts, henhouses,

stables, cart houses and mills. Watermills are far more common

than windmills, but you will find a good many of the latter in the

south-east, situated on the tops of hills. Marked out with flags on top

of them, they are otherwise largely unchanged from the windmills

of the late Middle Ages. They have cloth-covered sails and may be

two or three storeys high; but the most remarkable thing about them

is that they are built on a pivot so that the whole building can be

turned to face the direction of the wind. In most villages you will

also come across sawpits, timber piles, dungheaps, haycocks, beehives

and, of course, gardens. A statute of decrees that every new

house is to be provided with four acres of land: this is the minimum

thought to be appropriate for the needs of a family. All domestic

buildings are positioned so as to avoid frost pockets and flooding, with

further provision for the best juxtaposition of buildings. ‘A hay house

near a stable breedeth peril,’ declares William Horman, indicating just

how much thought you need to put into the location of your barns

and outhouses.

However much thought goes into the planning of a village, the

simple fact of people living in close proximity leads to sanitation prob-

lems. Many villages have common drains or sewers, which are regularly

blocked by faeces and detritus. Walk through Ingatestone in Essex in

the s, for example, and you will find that people have built privies

over the common gutter or sewer. In the manor court has to

forbid people from leaving dead pigs, dogs and other carcases in the

lanes. In a local man is ordered to remove a dunghill he has created

in a public place, to cease leaving dung and the gore of slaughtered

animals on the highway, and to stop doing things that block the common

drain and make terrible stinking odours. That same year a general

order is passed to prevent villagers building ‘jakes’ or privies above the

common gutter, due to the stench thus created. Further orders to that

effect are made in and . But do not let these incidents give

you the impression that Ingatestone is a particularly noisome place;

rather these entries in the manor court roll indicate that the manorial

officers are particularly sensitive to the fact that their community is

built alongside the main highway between London and Chelmsford,

and the lord of the manor, Sir William Petre, has no wish to be associ-

ated with a village that stinks. Sir William’s own house, Ingatestone

Hall, has one of the most highly developed drainage systems in the

country. Mind you, in Chelmsford you regularly find people urinating

on the market cross; and in nearby Moulsham various people have

been known to empty their chamber pots in the garden of a house

known as the Friary, much to the annoyance of the inhabitants.

London

London is not like any other city or town in England. As we have

already noted, it is vastly more populous and geographically larger

than anywhere else in the kingdom. Its social organisation is also

different: it is far more cosmopolitan and its role in the government

of the realm, including that of Westminster, is unique. Even at the

start of the reign, when its population is about ,, the taxable

wealth of its citizens is ten times that of the second-largest city,

Norwich, which has about , inhabitants. It is thus not only

more populous, it is proportionally more prosperous. By , when

London’s population has reached , people, there is simply no

comparison. But forget statistics: long before you reach the city, the

tangible social differences will strike you. Just look at the large

numbers of people you meet on the highway. Travelling along the

old Roman road known as Watling Street, you will come across

messengers in their riding gear and farmers driving their animals

to the city’s suburbs, physicians riding out of the city to treat patients

in the country, and foreign travellers in their carriages on the way

to Oxford. So much wealth and variety of life are compacted into

the city that in the Swiss traveller Thomas Platter declares:

‘London is not in England but England is in London.’ Most

Londoners would agree. The historian John Stow describes it in

his great Survey of London as ‘the fairest, largest, richest and best

inhabited city in the world’.

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All cities are places of contrast – and you will be harshly reminded

of this when you get to the junction of Watling Street and the long

road that is, in more recent times, Oxford Street. This point is known

as Tyburn; here stand the gallows for hanging thieves. Executions

normally involve several people being hanged at once. The crowds

from the city come to watch the killing as if it were a great entertain-

ment. Afterwards the naked bodies may be left turning in the breeze

for a day or two. When they have gone, and the gallows are ominously

empty, a haunting atmosphere remains. As the leaves of the tall elm

trees that grow here rustle in the wind, you cannot help but contem-

plate this ancient place of death.

Turn east. In the distance you can see the city. If you make this

journey on the day of Elizabeth I’s accession, November , you

will hear the church bells of all the parishes in the city and the

surrounding villages ringing out across the fields. The road from here

into London is more or less straight, leading from Tyburn to Newgate,

about ⁄ miles away. In the distance, towering above the city, stands

the immensely tall medieval spire of St Paul’s Cathedral, more than

ft high. If you stand here three years later, on June , you

might see a bolt of lightning strike the cathedral spire and set light

to the roof. The spire collapses, taking with it the bells and the lead

of the roof, leaving just the tower. One of the glories of the medieval

cathedral builders is left like a smile with a broken tooth. The church

itself is re-roofed, but the spire is never rebuilt: a visible symbol to

Londoners and visitors of the uncertainty of the times.

The road along which you are travelling is bordered by fields on

both sides until the crossroads with St Martin’s Lane and Tottenham

Court Road. Beyond this junction, behind a large copse of trees, is

the church of St Giles in the Fields. Further on the road turns into

a street, with about a dozen houses on each side. The next turning

on the right is Drury Lane, which leads between the fields to the

Aldwych and Fleet Street. If you don’t take this, but keep on going

straight, a moated building called Southampton House appears on

your left. The road turns slightly and enters the village of Holborn.

From here to the city walls the street is lined with houses on both

sides. This is where several of the Inns of Court are situated – Gray’s

Inn, Bath Inn and Furnival’s Inn on your left; Clement’s Inn, Lincoln’s

Inn, Staple Inn, Barnard’s Inn and Thavie’s Inn on your right. In these

places law students live and study in close proximity to Chancery

Lane. The parish church of St Andrew’s Holborn is next, on the right,

and facing it is the imposing medieval residence of the bishop of Ely.

After that you pass the turning into Shoe Lane, cross the bridge over

the Fleet River (Holborn Bridge) and find yourself in the sprawling

mass of houses that have erupted from the city. Still you have not

reached the city wall, although you can see it ahead: ft high, with

the crenellated gatehouse of Newgate guarding the entrance. But

you are already within the jurisdiction of the lord mayor and sheriffs

of London.

Return this way at the end of the reign and you will see the city

has spread even further west. Although the queen has it proclaimed

in that there should be no development of the suburbs, London

carries on expanding. In the government passes an Act prohibiting

any new housing within three miles of the city; this too only slightly

slows development. In the queen issues orders that all unauthor-

ised developments in the suburbs are to be removed, but the spread

of housing cannot be stopped: the houses on either side of the main

road through St Giles and Holborn are one continuous stretch by

. Within twenty years of Elizabeth’s death, Drury Lane will have

been entirely developed, with houses along it.

Suppose you do not rush straight into London this way. Let us

assume that, at Tyburn, you turn right along the country lane that

leads south, alongside the queen’s private hunting ground, called

Hyde Park. This brings you down to a junction with a road to the

city known by Londoners as ‘the Way to Reading’. One day, in the

next century, this will be Piccadilly, lined with aristocratic houses. For

now, though, it is a unmade track between the fields. If you come

this way on a fine day, you will see washerwomen laying out clothes,

bed linen and tablecloths on the grass to dry. But it is not to see the

washerwomen that you should come this way: rather it is to admire

the palaces. If you turn off and follow the track that will later become

Haymarket, this leads you down to the tall medieval cross at Charing

Cross. From here you will see the sparkling Thames straight ahead

and, along its bank to your right, the royal palaces of Whitehall and

Westminster.

What will you make of the nearer palace, Whitehall? None of the

buildings will be known to you; the only one standing in modern

times (the Banqueting House) has not yet been built, so it will appear

as an unintelligible mass of houses and roofs. It lacks all harmony or

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structural unity. Although the full scale of the ½ acres of building

that will one day come to be known as ‘the largest and ugliest palace

in Europe’ has not yet materialised, it will probably leave you with

that same impression. If you walk towards the great gatehouse you

will see the tiltyard on your right: a narrow enclosure with a barrier

down the middle for ceremonial jousts. Next to it is the royal tennis

court. On your left are the apartments and great hall of the original

building, York House, which forms the nucleus of this so-called palace.

Do not get me wrong: these buildings are lavish in the extreme, with

great care and attention spent on their construction and no expense

spared on their internal decoration. But the whole palace is just ‘a

heap of houses’, as one French visitor later puts it.

Go on under the arch of the great gatehouse and into King’s Street.

On your left is the queen’s privy garden: a large square courtyard with

formal flowerbeds. The stately-looking apartments on the far side,

which overlook the river, are where she spends much of her time.

Carry on, under the King’s Street gatehouse, and go past all the houses

of Whitehall. Ahead there is the gatehouse of the old Palace of

Westminster. Here, beside the great abbey church, is the old hall of

William II. That is now used by the offices of Chancery. The other

buildings of the medieval royal palace that were not destroyed in the

fire of have similarly been transformed into bureaucratic offices

or halls of government. The great royal chapel of St Stephen is now

the place where the House of Commons meets. Members of the

House of Lords convene in the old Queen’s Chamber. However, as

Elizabeth only summons ten parliaments, and these only sit for a total

of about two-and-a-half years of her forty-five-year reign, these huge

rooms are normally left cold and empty. That is true of most of the

royal palaces in Elizabeth’s reign. If you go upriver and visit Hampton

Court Palace, you will find that the walls are bare whitewashed plaster

with empty wooden frames, for the tapestries are taken down when

the queen is not in residence. Rather than servants scurrying about,

carrying food for a feast or logs for a hearth, you will see dust blowing

across the empty courtyards.

The Strand is the great street that connects Westminster and

Whitehall to the city of London itself. You will see hundreds of

lawyers and clerks walking along it from the city every morning and

returning in the evening. But it is much more than just a street: it

is where many of the most magnificent houses in London are

situated. At the Whitehall end, just north of Charing Cross, is the

royal mews, where the queen’s hunting falcons and her horses and

carriages are kept. Beyond, backing on to the river, are Hungerford

House, York Place, Durham Place, the Savoy Palace and Arundel

Place – substantial mansions that are the homes of statesmen and

bishops. The greatest lords have always preferred this area because

it is quieter than the city itself, the air cleaner, there is plenty of

space for the servants’ quarters and, most of all, the houses have

river access. From here the lords and their guests can simply take a

barge to their destination; they do not have to travel by road or risk

the attention of the mob. Most of these great houses are built round

a quadrangle, with the private residential parts overlooking the large

garden leading down to the river. On the north side of the Strand

there are smaller gentlemen’s houses. About halfway along is Cecil

House, the grand London residence of Sir William Cecil (later Lord

Burghley), the queen’s principal secretary. The house is far enough

advanced in for him to entertain Elizabeth here in person.

Beyond its garden, and running behind all the houses along this

north side of the Strand, are the undeveloped fields of Long Acre

and Covent Garden, which previously belonged to the monks of

Westminster Abbey and are now the property of the earl of Bedford.

The developers will start to move into the area in the next reign,

when Drury Lane has been built up.

At the heart of London is the Thames. It is a major asset to those

who live here. As the alleys and lanes of the city are so dank, dark

and dangerous, and the streets so congested, many people cut through

between the houses to the stairs down to the river, where they hire

a wherry to take them upstream or down. Upstream from London

Bridge you’ll find the wharf at Vintry, next to Queenhithe, with three

cranes (Three Cranes Wharf ) for lifting cargo that needs to be trans-

ported upriver, such as tuns of wine and timber. You will see hundreds

of boats moored here of an evening. But far more important is the

main port of London. This is made up of the twenty or so quays

and wharves on the north bank of the river between London Bridge

and the Tower of London, where deep-water ships can draw up and

where cranes are able to hoist the goods ashore. Galley Quay, nearest

the Tower, is a general lading place, but most of the others have

designated purposes. Old Wool Quay is for wool and fells. Beare

Quay is for traders coming from and going to Portugal. Sabbes Quay

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is for traders of pitch, tar and soap. Gibson’s Quay is for lead and

tin. Somers Quay is for Flemish merchants. And so on. So many

vessels are moored here that the Elizabethan writer and schoolmaster

William Camden compares the wharves to wooded groves, ‘shaded

with masts and sails’. In Thomas Platter notes that there is one

large boat nose-to-stern all the way from St Katherine’s Wharf ( just

to the east of the Tower of London) to London Bridge: one hundred

vessels in all.

Although the majority of visitors to the city remark on the large

numbers of swans on the Thames, you will probably be more

impressed by the number of boats. These range from dung-boats to

thousands of wherries and one glass boat: the royal barge. The river

itself is wider and shallower than in modern times, with no high

embankments. But one thing goes for all visitors: everyone talks about

London Bridge. This magnificent ancient structure of twenty arches

– more than ft long, ft feet high and almost ft wide – towers

above the water. It is built on huge ‘starlings’: low flat pillars of stone,

which are shaped like boats. These serve as both foundations and

cutwaters; they also impede the flow of tidal water under the bridge.

When the tide is going out it is impossible to row upstream. Similarly,

it is dangerous to ‘shoot the bridge’ and risk yourself in the turbulent

water when heading downstream. The starlings also act collectively

as a form of weir, slowing the flow of the river, so that it sometimes

freezes in very cold weather. In the winter of – the ice is thick

enough for some boys to play a football match on it. Everyone enjoys

that occasion, even the queen, who leads her courtiers out on to the

frozen river to shoot arrows for sport.

The impressive bulk of London Bridge is greatly enhanced by the

shops and four-storey houses constructed along it. These are the

homes of prosperous merchants, so the bridge has all the appearance

of a fine street. Towards the north end is a gatehouse, the New

Stone Gate. Six arches from the south end is the drawbridge. This

originally had two purposes: one was to allow larger ships access to

the river beyond the bridge; the other was the defence of the city.

A second gatehouse stands just to the north of this drawbridge,

emphasising the latter purpose. However, the drawbridge has not

been raised for many years; nor will it ever be used again. In

the dilapidated drawbridge tower is taken down and replaced by

Nonsuch House: a magnificent four-storey timber-framed house

prefabricated in the Low Countries, shipped to London and erected

in . Built over the seventh and eighth arches, this magnificent

brightly painted building straddles the entire bridge and enables

traffic to pass through its centre by way of a great passageway. At

the south end there is a third gatehouse, the Great Stone Gate, with

drum towers of four storeys. After the drawbridge tower is removed,

the Great Stone Gate is where traitors’ heads are displayed. Even

after they have rotted, the skulls are left on spikes as a reminder of

the fate that befalls those who dare oppose the monarch. At the end

of the century, you can still see more than thirty skulls there. London

Bridge is more than just a bridge: it is a symbol of London and a

statement of royal authority.

There are many other landmarks to visit. The Tower dominates

the eastern side of the city; you might be interested to see the medi-

eval palace in the inner bailey, which still survives in Elizabeth’s reign.

The fifteenth-century Guildhall is another important building that you

might recognise: it houses the administration of the twenty-six wards

of the city of London. Many locals will direct you to London Stone

on your sightseeing journey: a large menhir standing in the middle

of Candlewick Street (much larger than the fragment that survives in

modern times in a nearby wall). For many people, this stone is the

heart of London; they will tell you that it was erected by Brutus, the

legendary founder of Britain. Here they swear oaths, agree deals and

listen to official proclamations. Other sightseeing destinations will be

completely unfamiliar to you, however. The cathedral, for example,

was completed in the fourteenth century, and despite the loss of its

dramatic spire, it is still worth visiting for its medieval antiquities, such

as the Rose Window and the tomb of John of Gaunt. The medieval

city walls are also intact, having been extensively repaired with brick

in . The ancient gates of Ludgate, Newgate, Cripplegate,

Bishopsgate, Aldgate, Aldersgate and Moorgate similarly still stand.

Baynard’s Castle is located at the western extreme of the ancient city

walls, mirroring the Tower in the east. It is not a castle as such, but

a palatial fifteenth-century house built round two large quadrangles,

one with hexagonal towers at each corner. Another unfamiliar land-

mark is Paul’s Cross, the elevated octagonal preaching place with a

lead roof in the north-east corner of the churchyard of St Paul’s

Cathedral. Three days after Queen Elizabeth’s accession in November

, her chaplain preaches here. Sermons by him and other authorised

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preachers over the subsequent months attract thousands of Londoners

and visitors to the city, who gather eager to learn how the Church is

being reformed by their new monarch. It can also be a place of rioting,

when a preacher upsets his audience. On one occasion in the last reign

a dagger was thrown at a bishop preaching here. It stuck, quivering,

in the timber beside him.

Say what you want about the palaces and castles, and the land-

marks of London Stone, Old St Paul’s and London Bridge; the real

soul of London is in the streets. You will pass through alleys so

narrow and dark with overhanging houses, stinking so strongly of

the privies emptying into cellars, that you will wonder how people

can bear to live in such an environment. Yet you may turn a corner

and suddenly find yourself on a wide street with smart houses of

four or five storeys, with brightly painted timbers and glass in all

the windows. The Venetian Alessandro Magno is impressed on his

visit to the city in , remarking that ‘the houses have many

windows in which they put glass clear as crystal’ – which is quite a

compliment, coming from a man whose home city is one of the

great centres of glass-making. In some narrow lanes you will find

the clay of the street is damp all year round; in other areas the city

authorities regularly place gravel down to provide a road surface. In

July Henry Machyn records that the whole way through the

city – from the Charterhouse, through Smithfield, under Newgate

and along Cheapside and Cornhill to Aldgate, and on to Whitechapel

– is ‘newly gravelled with sand’, ready for the queen’s progress.

Most of the approach roads to the main gates to the city are paved

for a short distance both inside and outside the walls, as are the

Strand and Holborn High Street.

On market days you will find it almost impossible at times to

make your way along some thoroughfares. You won’t see so many

people in one place anywhere else in England. The city engages all

your senses: it is visible, audible and you can smell it. In Lothbury,

in the north of the city, you hear the rasping on the lathe, the

clanging, banging and hissing where the metal workers operate. In

the markets you hear the yells of the street vendors. There are criers

in the street delivering news and public announcements. A woman

in an apron walks past calling, ‘Who will buy my fine sausage?’

Another approaches you with a basket on her head, calling, ‘Hot

Pudding Pies, Hot!’ Stand still for any length of time and you will

hear ‘Come buy my glasses, glasses, fine glasses’ from a woman

walking along selling drinking goblets, or ‘Rosemary and bays, rose-

mary and bays’ from another carrying a basket of herbs. At dusk,

as the markets are being cleared away, the lighters walk between the

houses calling, ‘Maids, hang out your lights.’ Passing the prisons

of Newgate and Ludgate, you can hear the poor crying out through

the grilles in the walls: ‘Bread and meat for the poor prisoners, for

Christ Jesus’s sake!’

Alongside all this activity, it is the speed of change that makes

London unique. John Stow, describing the city in , mentions the

long street to the east of the Tower, which has become home for

thousands of mariners; fifty years earlier, no one lived there. He is

no less aware of the expansion to the north of the city: the lines of

houses that now stand where windmills were situated at the start

of the reign. All over the city old houses are being rebuilt. You would

have thought the authorities would take the opportunity to widen

the narrow alleys and make the city more splendid. But, despite

London’s wealth, they cannot afford to do so. As the population of

the city expands, the value of each house increases, and so every

square foot of space commands a higher premium. Hence you see

many houses rebuilt as six- or seven-storey buildings, even though

there is nothing more solid than timber to support them. Like all

the other towns and cities in the country, London is growing upwards

as well as outwards.

Given that the roots of London’s wealth and exponential growth

lie in trade, it is appropriate to end this brief description of the city

with a word or two about the commercial centres. As you may have

gathered from the street names already mentioned, many markets

are held in the streets. Bread Street is termed thus because it origi-

nally housed the bread market. Fish Street, Milk Street, Hosier Lane,

Cordwainer Street and many dozens of others are similarly named

after the trades carried on in each location. But there is no place

where all these trades can come together except the one great

communal gathering place, St Paul’s. As you can imagine, a cathedral

does not make an ideal place to trade; it is especially unsuitable for

selling fish (although this does happen from time to time). Sir

Thomas Gresham, the wealthy merchant and financier, is the man

who decides to do something about this. He persuades the

Corporation of the city to buy up eighty houses on Cornhill and

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sell them for the building materials alone, thus ensuring the demoli-

tion of the houses. The city loses out to the tune of more than

£,, but in return Sir Thomas, at his own expense, builds the

Royal Exchange in –. This is a three-storey structure of stone

enclosing a paved quadrangle, based on the Bourse in Antwerp. The

city’s merchants meet in the cloisters on the ground floor while

upstairs (known as ‘the Pawn’) there are shops. Milliners, haber-

dashers, armourers, apothecaries, booksellers, goldsmiths and glass

sellers all find it a profitable place to trade. It is London’s first

purpose-built shopping centre.

No description of the city of London would be complete without

some reference to Cheapside. If any street in the city deserves to be

called London’s High Street, this is the one. It is the main market

place, the widest street, the location for the lord mayor’s pageant and

the main showplace for royal processions. If you leave the Royal

Exchange and walk westwards from Cornhill, and through Poultry,

you will soon reach it. The great hall of the Mercers’ Company can

be found here. It is also the location of the Great Conduit, the large

stone fountain where housewives, servants and water carriers alike

queue up to fill their pails and water vessels. Ahead of you is the

Standard: another public water fountain adjacent to a column

surmounted by a cross. The Standard is also the place where the city

authorities demonstrate their authority: here you can witness the

cutting-off of hands for causing an affray. One row of fourteen shops

and houses on your left will undoubtedly catch your attention. Running

along Cheapside between Bread Street and Friday Street, these are the

most handsome houses in the whole city: four storeys high and covered

in gold. As the name indicates, the houses in Goldsmith’s Row are

mostly owned by bankers and goldsmiths. They are faced, in the

middle of the street, by the huge Cheapside Cross – one of the great

three-tiered medieval crosses erected by Edward I to commemorate

his late queen, Eleanor. The cross is much abused these days, and in

the lowest tier of statues is badly vandalised by youths; the statue

of the Virgin is pulled out of position and won’t be restored for

another fourteen years. Continue on a little further and you come to

West Cheap, where the market takes place and where the Little

Conduit supplies water to the northern part of the city. Finally you

come to St Paul’s and Paternoster Row, where the booksellers and

stationers have their stalls. If you carry on westwards, you can leave

the city by way of Newgate, and if you continue along the road to

the gallows at Tyburn and the road to Oxford you will eventually

return to Stratford.

Along Cheapside you might notice a tavern on your left: The

Mermaid. It is here that Mr Edmund Coppinger and Mr Henry

Arthington seek shelter from the London crowds in . It also

happens to be a drinking haunt of William Shakespeare of Stratford.

In this street wealth rubs shoulders with poverty while philanthropy

watches on. City dwellers meet country folk. It is a place of announce-

ments, public demonstrations and business. For the goldsmiths who

live here, and the rich merchants who attend meetings at Mercers’

Hall, it is a place of professional achievement and pride. For the

chronicler John Stow, it is a place of antiquity and great dignity. For

the well-dressed, it is an opportunity to show off. For Mr Coppinger

and Mr Arthington, it is a place of reckoning. And for the poet from

Stratford, it is a chance to observe it all, with a ‘pot of good double

beer’ in his hand.